King's Shield (60 page)

Round-cheeked Rosebud sucked her thumb, her ruddy curls sticky with honey and grime.

Han sighed. “As for the sing, yes. But not here. I keep feeling like the Idayagan spies are sneaking up right now. As soon as the sun is up, we’ll sing ’em.” She remembered Gdir’s face, so still. Her voice broke. “We’ll sing ’em good.”

Chapter Thirteen

THE locals had been right.

For three days a howling storm battered its way down the peninsula, prowling along the mountains before it wandered east.

The Venn fleet, having seen the signs of trouble, had sailed out to win sea room; the north shore above Lindeth was a pleasant morning’s ride in good weather, but it took two days for Barend to get his men there and into place.

The storm was a disaster for crops.

As Evred wrestled with angry merchants, pledging credit far beyond what he could hope to pay in his determination to keep his army supplied, Inda ended up spending watch after watch in sodden clothing, helping the people of Ala Larkadhe plan a lethal welcome for the Venn, under Tdiran-Randviar’s general orders, but Inda added some piratical touches that pleased the grim citizens.

Everyone left in the garrison as well as in the city worked; Inda was seen everywhere, which (Tdiran-Randviar thought) either heartened people or shut up the slackers. They helped close off streets and create blind alleys, showing people how to set up traps. They also created a maze that would lead the Venn in a continuous loop, once they hammered together then dragged a false stable front across a narrow street.

Up in the castle the Randviar strode about, her ferocious determination wearing out much younger women as some parties worked to sabotage everything and other parties, mostly castle and city children, were put on duty to guard the few remaining warriors from impaling themselves or tripping traps and breaking limbs.

The storm reached all the way to the north shore.

In the pass, Hawkeye’s and Noddy’s force plodded grimly day after day, night after night, in occasionally horizontal rain, gaining a little relief only when the winds were baffled by the soaring cliffs. Because they had all the remounts they could keep going by the dim, flickering light of torches. Their pace was slow but steady.

Hawkeye liked Noddy Toraca, he realized that fourth morning, when at last they gained a brief glimpse of sky.

Noddy didn’t talk much. Before his father’s accursed conspiracy, Hawkeye had no memory of Noddy, though he knew he’d had been part of Evred’s litter of scrubs during their academy days.

Hawkeye did remember the horror after his father tried to take the throne. The Marlo-Vayir men hauled his father off to the garrison prison, but no one had seemed to know what to do with him. Some thought he should be bound, others that he should be escorted.

Noddy said something to Hadand, and when she agreed with evident relief he appeared next to Hawkeye. “I’ll walk with him.”

And he accompanied Hawkeye to the garrison, even though he had been riding all day and was about to depart again. Not that Hawkeye knew that at the time. He was just aware of a slope-shouldered, scowly-faced fellow Evred’s age who said, “I’ll walk with him,” and fell in step beside him as if they were boys on the stroll to Daggers Drawn for a root brew.

Hawkeye had a sketchy memory of that walk. At some point he said, “They’ll flog me to death as a traitor.”

“No, they won’t,” Noddy said, with about as much expression as someone else would say, “I prefer light ale to dark.”

“My father—”

“Yes.” Noddy made a vague hand motion. “No way around that. He took a sword to the king. But you didn’t. We all saw that.”

“But I disobeyed my father’s orders.”

“Evred will hear you out. Cherry-Stripe, Buck, and me, we’ll tell him everything. You’ll see.”

“I’ll stand against the wall. That I accept. Because I disobeyed orders. No, I don’t accept it, because he betrayed his oath when he gave me that command. I-I-just not the traitor’s death—”

“You have witnesses. We saw you disobey orders from an oath breaker. That’s as much law as oaths are. We just don’t hear about that one . . . well . . . because there’s some dancing around the way Evred’s family came to power in the first place. Never mind that now. Here’s the thing. None of that will happen to you. Might have, had the Sierlaef lived. Or the Harskialdna. Bad business, all around.”

Inside the garrison they paced side-by-side, past all the watching eyes. Some men muttered, some flipped up the backs of their hands. Two spat, one uttered “Traitor” and gripped his sword hilt. Hawkeye’s blood ran from hot to cold to numb, but Noddy just walked by his side, past the eyes, and the whispers, and the weapons.

“But what if Evred’s dead? Didn’t my father say he did something?”

Noddy said, “That’s what I’m going to find out. He’s got Captain Sindan and an entire garrison up there in Ala Larkadhe, against four. If for some reason he didn’t make it, then I guess they’ll have to see if his cousin Barend is really alive. Didn’t someone say something about him? Anyway—” They arrived at the door of one of the cells, and Noddy walked right in first, and sat down on the bed, propping his elbows on his knees, hands dangling between. “—anyway, you let Hadand-Edli and the Adaluin sort it all out. They’ve got rank on anyone else. They won’t let anyone do anything more stupid than what we’ve already seen today.”

Anything more stupid.
That’s when Hawkeye knew he liked this fellow. Trusted him. And so he sat down at the other end of the bed and dropped his head into his hands.

Noddy got up and left. Quiet. Easy. Whereas (Hawkeye experienced during many cold-sweat nightmares afterward) if any of those sneering men with the spitting and the backs of their hands and their whispered “Traitor!” had tried to grab him there in the throne room or along that walk, and drag him to prison, he would have fought with all his strength. Killing if he could, to make certain they killed him, because life had ended anyway, or the meaning of the life, and he wasn’t a traitor and would not die at the post flayed as a traitor.

He’d never told anyone about that afterward, not until much later, after Noddy kept his word, and Evred listened, and restored his lands, took his oath at the coronation, and then appointed him interim Harskialdna in charge of the north until Barend was ready to take on the work. Gave him back not just his own personal honor, but the family’s.

Then to Ala Larkadhe came Noddy’s brother, called Nightingale for the gap between his front teeth and the astonishing ability he had with whistling. This was before Fala came to live with Hawkeye, when he was drinking too much distilled rye. One night, after Dannor had been particularly irritating, he downed a bottle or two and blabbed the entire story to Nightingale.

And Nightingale just said, “Heh. Didn’t know how dusted up Noddy got over that.”

“He was the calmest man there.”

Nightingale grinned, showing that gap between his front teeth. “No he wasn’t, or he wouldn’t’ve been that gabby.”

“That was gabby?”

Hawkeye had laughed a long time, and after that, the nightmares ceased. And though Hawkeye had seen Nightingale and Noddy since, neither had ever referred to those events.

Hawkeye was thinking about that as the weather finally eased a little. You didn’t really notice, but Noddy was capable. People trusted him. Evred, for example, had saddled them with those yapping half-grown runners-in-training, no use to man or beast. At fourteen, fifteen, and one sixteen, they were academy pigtail-age, not even old enough for lance training. Now they were expected to be running messages and holding weapons in the heat of battle, which was where commanders were?

If Evred had thought it a good idea when he departed the royal city, he’d changed his mind, because just before they left Ala Larkadhe he’d caught Noddy and turned them over to him, with strict orders to keep them at the back of the battle once the main force joined up with them.

Noddy had promptly assigned them to keep the wagons dry under the greenweave tarps, and to wand-and-feed duty on the remounts.

Hawkeye could hear them whooping and crowing in the back. He debated between riding back there and whacking heads to get them to settle down and ignoring them.

Noddy just rode along, apparently oblivious as he squinted up the steep cliffs rising to either side. Birds wheeled and darted about the craggy heights, so high up they were like fingernail dents against the sky. The pass had gotten more winding, narrower, and steeper, just over the last day. It smelled like wet rock, moss, and occasionally—strangely—brine.

They had slowed to a walk to protect the horses, while the scouts and the dogs made short forays ahead.

Another loud, braying teen laugh echoed from behind. The swirling fog that had descended after the storm deadened sound, but not quite enough. Hawkeye’s patience gave out. His knee tightened against his horse’s side and he laid the rein to his neck when the animal’s ears twitched forward. Then flattened.

Noddy straightened up. He and Hawkeye peered into the gently falling mist over the rain-sodden green grasses. Neither could see anything, but their horses’ ears flicked forward. Not long after the tall grass rustled crazily and a swarm of scout dogs raced down from the curve ahead. They pranced around the horses, quivering with excitement, ears flat, but quiet, as trained; behind came two riders, a scout and a young woman with a child riding behind her, leading a string of three horses that looked as droopy as the one being ridden.

Dripping flaxen braids flapped on the woman’s back as she slid down. She leaned against the animal’s shoulder, her face shockingly drawn. As Hawkeye and Noddy approached she lifted her arms to a brown-haired boy of perhaps nine, a boy with the distinctive pale eyes in a brown face and the generous, curving mouth characteristic of the Arveases. He too looked drawn, beyond exhaustion.

“I am Ndand Arveas. M-married to Flash,” she said to Hawkeye, her voice high and breathy on the
married.
“Liet-Jarlan ordered me to ride up the pass in warning if. I. Saw the red-black signal flag.” Her throat worked, then she went on in the hard, flat voice of tight control, “I checked the beacon. Since the men had not returned. I found Flash dead. At least several days.”

Her hand slid into her robe, half-pulling out what looked like a folded piece of paper, but she slid it back again.

“The little girls I left in the old robbers’ cave. With food. Like we arranged. I brought Keth—”

She indicated the boy, who lifted his chin as he said in a voice thin as a gull’s cry, “Flash is dead.”

The boy’s chest heaved on a sob. Then he sucked in his breath, teeth gritted.

“The beacon couldn’t be lit. My orders were to ride, no matter what. So I did. Me and Keth.” Her lips twisted in a spasm of grief. “Found these horses without riders. In the pass. Took them. I knew you’d need a scout report. There’s a place. On the pass. Where if you go up the path behind the Elm Cliff you can see down the pass. I counted at least twice ten wings of Venn marching. More coming, many more, judging from the noise all the way down the canyons.”

A wing was eighty-one men. Hawkeye and Noddy had six wings.

“Riding or foot?” Noddy asked.

“Both. Mostly foot.”

“In the lead will be the heavies for the front lines and the longbow men for just behind,” Hawkeye said, remembering Inda’s prediction.

Noddy tucked his chin into the collar of his coat. Then turned to the boy. “You’re Flash’s brother?”

The child straightened his back. “I am Kethadrend Arveas. I will be Flash’s Shield Arm.” His brows puckered. “Was. He was dead. We saw him—” He turned his face into the woman’s arm.

“Is there anyone who needs aid?” Ndand asked, face tight with misery.

Noddy said, “Tdiran-Randviar in Ala Larkadhe will probably welcome another woman on the castle walls. Why don’t you ride down to the city, talk to her?”

She touched fingers to heart, tossed the boy up into the saddle, remounted and rode past.

Hawkeye said, “We know they’re there, then, and approximately the numbers.”

Noddy gave his turtle shrug. “Time for Inda’s trickery.” He pulled out the gold case Inda had given him back in Ala Larkadhe, thumbed some damp paper from his inner pocket and a herald’s field quill-and-ink tube, then cocked his head. “D’you think the Runners will rise up against us when these things take over communications?”

“They won’t.” Hawkeye was definite. “Take over, I mean. First, we don’t have mages, and second, you’ll never be able to use ’em in battle, unless you can convince your enemy to stand by, sword lowered, until you finish writing your note before you commence your fight.” He forced a laugh at the notion. “Third, who’d trust ’em? You saw Evred when he insisted on all that code stuff.”

Noddy whistled between his teeth as he wrote carefully on the paper, using Evred’s simple code nouns. Then he put the paper in the case and said the words of transfer.

That done, Hawkeye summoned the Runners to pass the word down the line that the enemy had been sighted. “Tell ’em we’re going to push on as fast as we can ride. Our orders are to reach the top first. Hold it until the Harskialdna gets here with the reinforcements.”

Leaving everyone to wonder how long that would be. But no one said it as they changed horses and saddled up for a hard ride.

Rain began to fall shortly after.

Chapter Fourteen

ON the day the weather cleared, Inda found himself at loose ends for the first time. For a short time he car omed around the castle, but he was in the way of working women, and he couldn’t sit still enough to listen to the various guild and merchant representatives all yawping at Evred, either demanding or begging or asking questions no one could answer.

The wind had shifted. The Venn had to be coming in for their second landing try. It was time to see the enemy.